


even in the tangle

by Anonymous



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Blindfolds, Bondage, F/F, Smut, i GUESS?!?!?!, is that descriptive enough? we good? can i go now?, it's a character study don't be fooled, rope, what do i fucking tag this, yeah lots of that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:55:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27062296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: This is how you like her best, just as you remember her at the beginning. Soft skin, golden hair, delicate hands – and steel, gunshot, mirrored behind the eyes. Smooth skin and black rope, each straining against the other. Heaving, rolling, tackling for control and you don’t have a dog in this fight. But you get to watch, which is better.“If only you could see you,” you say.
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Comments: 15
Kudos: 73
Collections: Anonymous





	even in the tangle

**Author's Note:**

> some of yall will absolutely work out who wrote this and kudos to you. personally I am finding even this sliver of anonymity vaguely thrilling. 
> 
> and with that I give you: filth

It's not about the sex.

Okay, except it is. Sometimes it isn't, obviously, you do have to sleep. And eat, and work. And have leisure time — there are other kinds of leisure.

Actually, you dispute the idea that it is _about_ anything. If anyone asked you to track the steps you took from a hospital bathroom to violent resolve to receiving her bullet to _here_ …you would refuse outright. You ask yourself this question, every other day, and every other day you refuse. It’s an exercise in futility, in disturbing things better left in slumber.

The point is: it’s not just about the sex, it never was, you tell herself, you told yourself.

But sometimes —

Sometimes you're kneeling before her on the bed and you wonder how on earth you got here. Between her thighs, strong but bound tight against her calves, useless to her but of infinite use to you. Watching the curves of her torso, the rise and the fall of her, tilting her face towards the heavens, eyelids fluttering as she strains to keep them shut. It's the only time she prefers not to look at you – before all the knots are tied. It's the only time she indulges, completely, in the act of being watched without the defence of watching back.

Because it _is_ an act, for the two of you. To shed the skin of subject, to be the object; it takes some doing, it needs some giving. It hollows Villanelle out – you, too, on the odd but not infrequent occasion. Contrary to popular opinion, neither of you were hollow to begin with. That’s something you do only to each other.

Natural predators, the both of you. And so the unnatural thing…it _is_ an action. It takes doing.

"Good," you tell her, because you know all of this. You know what these things take. "You're being so good."

Villanelle sighs — this is more of the giving in, the giving of breath and of the cut of her shoulders. She twitches only a little when you touch her, fingers and nails and rope all in one.

It’s been a learning process; you never did girl scouts, or sailing, or anything. But you've had time. You've made time, impossibly, to perfect angles and knots and the tension of a cord.

It came easily. That shouldn’t be a surprise. Haven’t you had a lifetime of practice, ensnaring those luckless enough to pass by? Niko. Your parents, you think sometimes, when you're feeling sentimental. Any friends you pretended to have, any career, any home. All wound up in knots so tight and tough you needed to slice right through them, in the end, and cut it all away.

Things change, winds shift. It's not yourself you tie up these days.

It's her.

Wind the cord between her thighs and she sucks in a sharp breath through her teeth, eyes still shut. She’ll look later, she always does, but for now it’s the feel of it that matters. The slow, methodical process, the careful twisting and knotting, the work of your capable fingers. Tugging rope from point to point across her skin, like string stretched between pins on a map. Back to the beginning, back to basics.

And she’ll open her eyes when you’re done, you know this, it’s what she always does. Like a present. Like Christmas morning. She’ll look at herself first, admiring the artwork. And fair enough too, you suppose, fair enough. But you know it’s also because she’s gathering herself up to look at you.

And when your eyes meet then…that might be your favourite. That might be it, for – well, at least for now.

Villanelle is still, this time. Uncharacteristically so, as you wind the cord around her shoulders, framing her breasts and tying the next knot at her sternum. She doesn't bow forward, angling for pressure, stealing touch. You know she wants to; usually she would be squirming already, pressing herself into you, bare skin against cool-cut fabric. She picked this suit out for you herself – you agreed, maybe you were feeling generous that day. Though you don't regret it, either, not when she loves it quite so much. Not when she loves it like this — like goosebumps and satin, like skin and starch-iron, like contrasts.

But tonight, Villanelle allows herself none of that indulgence. She’s holding herself back, apart, bone-still. There’s something missing, here, and you miss it, and you are selfish. You settled into that, as time went on, with Villanelle’s naked encouragement. You feel it now, accompanied by only the slightest tick of guilt.

Except, well. Can’t you allow her a bit of slack, this once? You’re not a monster.

"Villanelle," you say, pausing at her stomach, feeling her diaphragm heave against your knuckles and stretch against the already tight rope. You don't need to ask, you're well past that. You need only say it.

Villanelle sighs again, this time more of a huff, edging to a groan. And she shuffles closer — eyes still scrunched shut — as if to kiss you, as if to feel your shirt against her nipples, not rough but rough enough. And she stops. Shuffles again, leans back. Sighs, again.

Maybe you do need to ask. "Villan—"

"Please, Eve."

You settle closer to her, deciding to give her a little of what she denies herself. She flinches — away from your kiss? — and the moment hangs, suddenly awkward. Villanelle is still, frozen in her quick twist away from your mouth, away from soft touch.

Okay. Okay, you can work with this.

So you don't kiss her. You make sure she feels the cold of your nose, the heat of your mouth, but you don't kiss her; instead, you breathe with her. You murmur against her cheekbone, "Use your words."

Her mouth twitches, she scrunches her eyes tighter, blacker, shutter. You will wait. You will never get used to the time you have with her — have had, will have. But you will wait.

"Keep going," Villanelle says finally. She sounds like herself, and she sounds like something else. "Finish it.”

I mean, you have tools. You have a rope. So you let it touch her for you, tracing circles around her abdomen, looping and twisting and knotting, closing her in. Pulling in all her pieces, keeping them shut, tight, safe.

You don’t get the appeal, personally. But you get her.

You check the tug of the ropes binding her thighs to her calves, forcing her apart. You adjust the cord so it sits snugly against the inside dip of her thighs, across her ribs, tucked against her spine.

And you’re done.

She doesn’t open her eyes.

“Villanelle,” you murmur. “Villanelle, I’m finished.”

She bobs her head vaguely. Parts her lips to taste the air. But keeps her eyes shut, jar-tight. Well, you think, if she wants to be a monument…

The realisation: tonight is different. Villanelle is different. You’d like to see her eyes, you’d like to be watched back, you’d like her to see your work and marvel at it. But that’s no reason to stop.

Villanelle is a sight. Sitting up on her haunches, bared to the air, head tossed back, blinding herself. Thighs quivering, but only just. Arms bound behind her, opening her up to anything, everything, though here there’s only you. She is resplendent in black cord and the soft light of the bedside lamp, and nothing else. And nothing.

She is wet already; you can see it, framed just so by lengths of rope. Her breasts, too, peaking between diamonds. The criss-cross of the cord presents small expanses of skin, just enough to pinch, or slap, or smooth beneath your palm.

This is the first thing you do. The soft skin of her belly — her scar, your scar, bordered in rope like a picture. You stroke it with fingertips then press with the heel of your hand. This is how it always begins.

Except of course she is a different kind of creature tonight. She allows the touch for a few moments before shirking back. Was that a whimper? Whatever it was, it jolts between your legs and you think about chasing her down and subjecting her to the test of your hands, anything to hear it again.

You discard the idea. Selfishness is rote, for you, second nature. And now your natures compete and, still, each pushback surprises you. Still, there are occasions you have to curve yourself to fit around her.

You aren’t used to it, maybe you’ll never be. She blows like glass, you bend only when heated, quenched, tempered.

You settle back onto your heels. Where do you go from here?

Villanelle twitches like she wants to open her eyes, but she resists. The strength of will it must be taking. "Eve," she says firmly. “I am being very patient.”

"Yes,” you reply, a little shakily, bubbly. Like laughing at a funeral. “Okay." You curl two fingers beneath the rope and tug her closer, which gets a closed-mouth, closed-eye smile.

Maybe — maybe she wants it like this. For once. The object. Watched, kept, mounted high in a place of pride. Not an act at all, but an act inverse, inside-out. Like void, like negative space, like whatever they call psychopaths on television these days.

Okay. You take a slow breath. Okay.

You might be itching for it, you might be aching for it, you might be this close to dripping, yourself, but there is time. Has been. Will be.

That's the miracle of you two, really.

She doesn't flinch when you kiss her, just gasps a little in surprise. That could be the attraction of it, maybe it’s the shock, the tremor. You bend her backwards, chasing breath, softly softly until she licks into your mouth and bares her teeth and you get the message. Loud and clear.

She falls when you let go of her, utterly open, lolling back onto her bound arms against the pillows. Her shoulders must ache. She works her jaw — can't move, won't speak, but you know what she's angling for.

"No," you tell her. "Sit back up."

She huffs and waits for you to help her up with a hand to her back, though God knows she has enough core strength to do it herself. She hovers there, licks her lips. You want to scold her again – whatever she wants, she has to tell you, first. She knows this. She’s had long enough.

Another selfish urge. As is the desire to ask: "Will you open your eyes?"

Villanelle shakes her head mutely.

"Oh. Uh. Do you want —"

" _Yes_."

You don’t just _have_ a blindfold, it’s not something you do. Traditionally and historically – tradition may be largely alien to you but _history_ , you have a lot of it – you get off on something like the opposite.

But there’s one of Villanelle’s robes tossed carelessly on the floor beside the bed, so you take the silk tie from it and test its length, its width. It will do, you suppose.

You wrap it around your hand first, uncertain but admiring the effect. Like a boxer. Villanelle sometimes comes home with scraped knuckles, occupational hazard, and she’ll go to bed with gauze wrapped about her hands. In the morning the sheets will stink of disinfectant. In the morning the gauze might bleed straight through.

You think about how that might look on you. Silk around your fingers, speckled with blood. Soaked in it.

Well, that’s just a whole other thing, isn’t it.

Usually Villanelle is the one who likes to talk during sex, but now she's silent. Eerily so. You feel urged to fill the quiet – now _that’s_ an unnatural thing. You’re not so good with words. You’re good with taking them, keeping them, turning them round and on their heads. But to say them, to deal them out? Villanelle wields them like knives. You’d prefer the knife, in or out of bed.

But maybe this is your chance. To turn her round and round and round and round, and on her head.

“What do you – “ It comes out cracked, squeaky. You clear your throat past the awkwardness. “What do you want?”

It’s only her mouth you can see beneath the blindfold – lips pressed tightly – and her nose, twitching just a little. Her jaw thrust out and up and squarely set.

“Whatever you want,” she says.

Whatever you want.

It’s a loaded statement, trigger-ready. Even so, you’re not sure why it hits you so hard just now, like a blow. Like an _I told you so_ , in all its stark, missed-step glory.

And this is how you know time has passed while you two were so busy figuring out how to snarl yourselves together, irreparably, and learning through calamity which knots not to tie. Villanelle is not telling, she is not even asking, she is simply – oh. _Whatever you want._

Well. What do you want?

You start with touch, and Villanelle doesn’t shy away this time because you keep your hands moving. Run the flat of your hand up her thighs, down again, the curve of skin and where it dips beneath the rope. This is where she likes it tightest, so the flesh blushes, so it strains and she looks fit to burst, so when it’s all over the skin there will glow red in a tender criss-cross.

You like it, too.

The way the old callouses on the sides of your fingers catch on her skin, you like that too. You don’t stop for a second, not to linger, not to caress. That isn’t what anyone wants, you think. This isn’t what anybody likes – not now, in _this_ moment. Not before the wind changes.

You kiss her neck, though, down the side of it. She is tense there, tendons straining, you cannot resist. This draws you closer, so of course you smooth a hand over her breast, tucking the tips of your fingers beneath the rope so your palm is pressing, pressuring down. Leverage.

This is what you want. You don’t need anyone to tell you so.

She wants to be beneath you, so you pull her onto your lap instead. She wants to taste you, so take her jaw in your hand and let her lick the skin of your palm but you are not soft about the dig of your fingers and you are not weak about forcing her head back and back and into place. From this angle her throat is tense as a wire, blue with veins, bare as a secret.

She holds herself there in the stretch even when you move your hand, letting it trail down, grasp the secret. Tell it.

“Good,” you say, because she is good, shockingly so, and that’s no secret. She knows it.

She smiles with teeth this time, and you decide that will be your vantage point. Without her eyes to ground you and guide you. Instead you will fix on the shine and the black and the pink of her mouth, and you will take your cues from there.

Is it truly yours? This want that’s driving you. It’s been too long, you’ve had too much time, too much space to twine and tangle together. There’s a bit of a chill, even in your shirt and suit, but she is sweating. Dead of night, must be. The window is cracked slightly open. Wind rustle, hoot of an owl. Who is who?

It’s sparse in this room at the midnight hour, and you feel this quite suddenly. Spaced out, so much rope and so much slack that of course it would wind into knots, of course it coiled and snarled until the two of you might pull taut again.

So much time. Time you never thought you’d have, you weren’t prepared for the knife to slip in like this: so very slowly. Villanelle was right all along – it hurts more, this way. But did you ever even notice?

You know this: she is a tear, a twist, a rope-trap. You can’t quite pin her down but she is all of these, at the very least.

This is how you like her best, just as you remember her at the beginning. Soft skin, golden hair, delicate hands – and steel, gunshot, mirrored behind the eyes. Smooth skin and black rope, each straining against the other. Heaving, rolling, tackling for control and you don’t have a dog in this fight. But you get to watch, which is better.

“If only you could see you,” you say, and it tastes like the back of your throat.

She groans, mouth hanging open even after the sound has torn away. Fuck, you’re not even touching her, you’re gripping the toy the way you want to grip her wrists, her thighs, her chin. Selfish. There’s a net of rope doing that for you, why can’t you let it? And there’s the vibrations jolting up to your shoulder, you have to bear that too.

Your other hand clings to the knot between her breasts, guiding her to grind down and up and around again. She straddles you, but the heat of her only just manages to warm you through the fabric of your slacks.

You’re not even touching her, she’s not even looking at you, and you’re – mostly you’re trying not to make a sound, not to let go of the ropes and get yourself off instead.

The _sounds_ she makes — they steal your breath. And she makes a lot of sounds, always does, and whatever mood she’s in now she’s still loud about it.

You’ve categorised them, because you’re like that – this, you will never tell her. There are the ones that are grating, throat-deep like gunshots. And then there are the others: shaking, airy, flowing like poison, floating like fine silk. You pin it back with your nails. You pin it down.

You’ll keep this one, and this one, and this one…

Your tongue burns again, creeping bile, like you might cry. Or you might retch it up. Look at you, look at you – utterly hateful, self-serving. You don’t know what you want but you do it anyway. 

But then you stop yourself, bury that instinct. Look at _her_.

It’s the least you can do, to behold the catch in your web. It’s the least you can do to bend to her.

“Look at you,” you choke. You can’t even finish the sentence: “You look…”

Villanelle sighs, and that’s a new sound, breath speaking where she cannot. It’s a novel thing. You shift your hips and tug her down by the knot of rope and chase it again, one more time, one more time so you can capture it, smuggle it safely away.

The ties reel her in, strap her down, so when she comes it’s like – it’s like she’s barely there at all.

Her cry is softer than all the rest, breaking in the middle. She’s never looked more fragile. Just one tug of the ropes – wound that tiny bit tighter – and she might collapse beneath them, fall in on herself.

You’ve never been more aware of the blood pumping through her, her beating heart. How close those veins sit to the surface of her skin, the underside, the underbelly. She can unravel quicker than a fraying rope. You could cut through her more smoothly than a knot.

When she comes, you think, _again_.

Again, again, again. And maybe she’ll never look at you again, never let you touch her again – you always worry that. You always worry you’ve missed a sign along the way that now turns out to be vital. You always worry you might tie the next knot a little too tight or let out just a bit too much slack, and then what? _And then what?_

But even if…Maybe it doesn’t matter. Again, you think.

“Again,” she says.

Somewhere, though, there is a loose thread.

It pricks at you, you can’t resist. Villanelle might blind herself, mute herself but not you, you could never – you don’t want to miss it. Not even a second of her, not even a glimpse. She builds like a puzzle and to this day you still fear you’ll lose a piece, skip a step.

You can’t help it. You ask, “Why did you want me to do that?”

“Mmm.” She bites at her lip, and with her eyes covered she’s more sharklike than ever. She could be anything under there, anything at all, as long as it had teeth. Her voice dips low beneath the answering question, “Why did you want to do it?”

“I – “ _Did_ you? So much of you is her. As it was at the beginning, so it is now – but doubled, tripled down. You trail a finger along the cord that stretches up her sternum, culminating in knots like a spine in reverse.

She relaxes under your touch – your touch that isn’t your touch, because really you’re just pressing the rope into her, digging black lines into faded red ones, tucked away on her skin for later. But nevertheless she relaxes, like she might fall right through the bed. Through your fingers, out of the ropes, too limp and too slippery to catch.

Villanelle’s jaw slackens too, her mouth falls just slightly open.

And without her wide, wet eyes to soften it that mouth looks like a pit, a hole. Like you could throw anything down it and be certain you’d never get it back, like you could simply sit at its edge and crumble in. You ache to fill it; impossible task. But your thumb will do for now.

She licks around your knuckle, presses soft flesh against her teeth. God, you need her. It almost hurts and you squeeze your thighs together but relief is scarce, out of reach.

First things first.

You take the knife from the bedside – a short, serrated blade with a blunted tip. You slip the flat of it over her stomach and beneath the first cord. Just an inch, a short cut away from the wound you once made.

She can’t see you, can’t see the flex of your hand around the knife, nor the look in your eyes. She has no idea what you might do next. Well, neither do you. Maybe you’re both on the same footing, maybe for the first time.

Because you are thinking, oh, you are thinking there is a way for you to erase all the time you’ve had together. You could cut right back into that scar. You could lengthen it, widen it, you could make it crack like a smile or gape like a scream.

You turn the knife, bracing the serrated edge against the rope. You watch her grin.

“So, Eve,” she drawls, with that black-pit mouth. “Did you get what you wanted?”

You cut it all away.


End file.
